Judicial orders obtained by The Associated Press said an order for Garcia’s arrest had been issued.

Peru’s Health Ministry said Garcia was sent to Jose Casimiro Ulloa Hospital at 6.45am local time for a bullet wound to the head.

A spokesman from the hospital said his condition is delicate.

Peru’s police officers stand guard at the hospital where former president Alan Garcia was taken (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Garcia was under investigation for bribes allegedly paid during the construction of Lima’s metro during his 2006-2011 government.

He had denied ever receiving money from Odebrecht, which is at the centre of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal after admitting in a 2016 plea agreement with the US Justice Department that it paid corrupt officials across Latin America nearly 800 million US dollars (£613 million) in exchange for major infrastructure contracts.

The scandal has led to the jailing of numerous politicians across the region, especially in Peru, where former president Pedro Pablo Kucyznski was detained just last week as part of a money laundering probe into his ties to the company.

Former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is also in hospital (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Congressional allies of Kuczynski said he was also taken on Tuesday night to a local clinic with high blood pressure.

A Peruvian judge last week ordered Kuczynski’s detention for 10 days as he investigates some 782,000 dollars (£600,000) in previously undisclosed payments from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht more than a decade ago. A hearing is scheduled to take place to decide whether to increase his detention to three years.

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Garcia, 69, was a populist firebrand whose erratic first presidency in the 1980s was marked by hyperinflation, rampant corruption and the rise of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.

When he returned to power two decades later he ran a more conservative government, helping usher in a commodities-led investment boom in which Odebrecht played a major supporting role.